Monday, December 26, 2011

At the NCSS conference this year one of the few
sessions I went to promoted a series of games put out by PBS called "Mission US." It struck me quickly that these games
have a lot of potential- more than many other games I've seen that are designed
for classroom use, which are more about rewarding students for jobs well done
or repetitive drill for low-level cognitive skills rather than for actually
supporting instruction in critical thinking and analysis of more complex ideas.

Some of the work I've done outside of the
classroom this year has been a collaborative effort between
"technologists" and NYC educators to create new technologies for the
classroom that are actually useful, easy to implement, and attractive to
teachers. This is a significant
departure from many technology initiatives, which are created by people outside
of the classroom and oftentimes by people who have never been in a
classroom. Most of these
initiatives fail because they don’t lead to real academic improvement or
achievement and are really more about bells and whistles than solid
instruction.

One of the major veins the larger group of
technologists and educators has worked is "gamification": bringing
elements of gaming such as leveling-up, accruing points, and defeating levels
into an academic curriculum. There is a wide range of opinions about gamifying
education, ranging from the naysayers to those that believe this will help
deliver public education from its obvious bottoming out (see the previous post
about Ravitch’s view on education).

The largest issue I have with using games in
the classroom is that when you play most video games there is essentially one
preferred outcome- completing a level.
While there might be some variance in how a level is completed, the
problem is the same and is not created by the player and there are generally
very few ways of effectively addressing the challenge. In education, this strikes me as
something that puts a learner at quite a disadvantage, as they will develop the
mindset that the end goal is obvious, that there is only one, and the ways to
solve the problem are either predefined or extremely limited. This seems to put boundaries on
critical thinking, problem generation, and problem solving skills.

On another level, I think that video games are
rotting many young minds in this country.
They’re addictive and have replaced hours of time that could have been
spent playing and discovering things with friends, reading, etc.

At the conference, a representative from PBS
presented the first mission in the "Mission US" series, entitled
"For Crown or Colony?". The goal of the game is to teach
students basic facts about the colonial period and pose problems that can be
discussed in the classroom by the teacher and students, thereby directly
supporting instruction about the colonial period in United States history. The developers recognized that
flexibility is a must for any academic curriculum, so they provide graphic
organizers, vocabulary exercises, extension activities and other materials for
the game, while at the same time promoting the idea that this game could be
used for one day, two days or three weeks. This leaves it up to the teacher to determine how it best
supports the students’ needs and how it can be woven into the curriculum he or
she developed- quite a departure from the canned online curricula being sold in
licenses by the thousands all across the United States.

The PBS game is also set up like a choose-your-own-adventure
book, wherein your actions change the outcome of the story. Because of this, students can play the
mission numerous times and get a different perspective on the colonial period
in what seems to be a fairly engaging way. I actually had to refocus my attention on the speaker several
times, as I was getting sucked in before he was even half-way through the
session.

This year I started using more BrainPOP videos as homework assignments. My
assumption was more students would watch them and complete the associated
quizzes than would complete reading assignments about similar topics. When students do this, it frees up more
class time for things such as writing, inquiry, and collaboration, and also
shifts the structure of the class.
Instead of class being used for both content acquisition and skill
development, it becomes more about the latter, which is something for which the
students seem to need a bit more guidance.

While I can't endorse it yet, I'm definitely
going to pilot the use of "For Crown or Colony?" in my homeroom this
year to see how it engages students and how well they learn content through
it. PBS is also coming out in
January with another mission about abolitionism. Based on what the presenter showed at the conference, I’ll
likely give that one a whirl as well.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

A number of keynote speakers at the conference,
but three really caught my attention, namely: Arne Duncan, Diane Ravitch and James Loewen. I was able to see Arne Duncan, the
Secretary of Education, and Diane
Ravitch, a professor at NYU and a fairly controversial, though respected,
figure in education, however James Loewen, the author of Lies
My Teacher Told Me and many other works, I was not able to see due to
another commitment.

Duncan spoke first on Friday, though he was
originally scheduled to speak after Ravitch.After hearing both speeches, many people I talked to support
the theory that hers would be a hard act (for him) to follow and so he moved to
the morning.Up until that
morning, I’ve put forth some effort to defend the Obama administration and even
given them the benefit of the doubt on their education policy.After hearing Duncan speak, I can’t
justify his policies anymore with regard to education.

There were two main takeaways from his speech:
teachers should accept standardized exams as part of their evaluation and he’s
willing to say basically anything to get the applause of teachers.I go back and forth on whether I think
test scores should count for a very
tiny part of teacher evaluation or none at all, but when he started saying we
should double teachers’ salaries across the board, it was obvious that he
wasn’t taking us seriously.There
is no way to double teachers’
salaries.We are the most
expensive part about education- and rightly so- in spite of our meager
salaries.Doubling the cost of the
most expensive part of education would bankrupt every single state in this
country and Duncan knows that.Suggesting it to get some applause out of teachers is not only
patronizing, it’s reprehensible.

I was disgusted when he finished his address.

Ravitch’s address was quite a departure from
that.It was apparent from the
beginning of the speech that she’d actually prepared for the group, rather than
listing a few bland policy pieces taken from government-issued literature and
dreaming up something absurd to make us clap.Part of the reason she is so fascinating and controversial right
now is that she worked with the Bush, Sr. and the Clinton administrations and
was a huge proponent of standardized testing and NCLB, but as the movement
began playing out realized that they are in fact really bad for our students
and country.This came out during
her keynote.

It’s difficult to sum up everything she said,
but some main takeaways for me were:

·The biggest crisis our schools face is the one being created by the
media- a direct attack on teachers, students, and our nation’s education system.

·Our schools are not the problem- poverty is.She pointed to the fact that the U.S.
has never scored high in international polls, but everyone seems to think we
did.In fact, when the first major
comparative international study of schools was conducted, it compared only
twelve nations and we were dead last.If you compare schools with even a 25% poverty rate in our nation to
schools in other nations, we are ranked
as high or higher than them.As
you reduce the poverty level in a given school we outscore all other nations
and if you increase it, we fall in the rankings.The real issue is economic disparity and the fact that a
huge fraction of American kids are now living in poverty.

I am biased as a teacher- that’s obvious. But I
do actually believe what Ravitch is saying and have espoused similar ideas
about the media.Most reasonable
people I know think the “mainstream” media at this point in American history is
complete garbage and does very little to inform us or help us to prevent
problems from arising in this country.In fact, I think many would agree that they promote, hope for, and/or
make up terrible scandals and problems almost daily.

Perhaps we should commiserate with media moguls
though.They’re just trying to
make a living, right?And the fact
that teachers are extremely easy
targets makes for easy picking, right?Heck, we work with kids every day and, completely seriously, should be
scrutinized for that; we are public employees, paid by tax dollars; and, as
soon as Secretary Duncan’s plan to double our pay is pushed through Congress,
we will actually be the cause for America’s implosion and transformation into a
human black hole.

In spite of the bias, even if you refuse to
believe what Diane Ravitch has to say, at least she has real things to
say.Perhaps Arne Duncan should
enroll at NYU and figure out how to do that.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference
was in Washington, D.C. again this year.
An old
post of mine I looked through today about NCSS made me smile, as I seemed
to be pretty gung-ho about the organization, if a bit sarcastic. In the post I
mention a few different approaches to attending conferences. At this year’s the following things
enhanced my experience: the fact that I’ve taught for a while and attended with
closer colleagues; having helped to implement a curriculum piece substantial
enough that its write-up is being published twice this year; and, the fact that
I’ve attended 4.5 previous NCSS conferences (one was just virtually).

The last proved helpful in a number of
ways. I was able to identify
fruitful sessions more easily in the program, talk people up about the sweet,
sweet giveaways in the exhibitors’ hall, and I was less stressed about wringing
everything possible out of the conference, and more interested in relaxing,
learning a lot, networking, and enjoying the city. My first NCSS conference was in DC while I was an undergrad and,
after madly attending every possible session for two straight days, I asked my
advisor, “Should I keep attending sessions or go see the city? I’ve never been here before.” He smiled
a bit at my pre-service dedication and told me to get heck out of the conference
center and see the nation’s Capitol.

A few years of teaching experience gave me some
insight into what to look for in sessions and materials, but also on keynote
speakers, and conversations happening that addressed policy issues and trends in
the field. The relationships I
have with peers, friends, and colleagues are substantially different, lending
to a better conference. My first year, I was a squirrelly undergrad from Kansas
with a brand new suit running around D.C.’s convention center trying to figure
what the heck it means to be a history teacher and wandering around the city by
myself in awe of all that it is. This
year I took a train down from New York, as did my fiancée, met with my
friends/colleagues, and was a bit more interested in relationship building.

One new development stemmed out of the
cross-continental discussion effort my colleagues and I have supported over the
past couple years. At the very
least, we talked the talk well enough to get some people in our session room interested
in our work and in starting another major initiative similar to, and
potentially substantially larger than, ours. Divulging details at this point is
premature, but the very prospect of an international collaborative effort and even
the opportunity to have a conversation about it was fairly exhilarating. If there ever is more on that (knock on
wood), I’m sure I’ll post it.
Regardless, networking was a much larger focus this year, instead of
figuring out the definition of social studies or finding tools to get things
under control in my classroom.

Overall I’d say this year’s conference was a
success. I’m already looking forward to next year’s, which will be in Seattle,
as well as the National Council for History
Education (NCHE) conference,
which my colleagues and I will be attending in the spring. It’ll be good to get a look at a
different organization specifically geared for history teachers and compare the
free swag they give out to the free swag I get at the NCSS conference.